Free Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons by Julie Smith Page A

her.”
    “Well, guys don’t do that much.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    The Rodenboms seated us in their living room, a place of smart sofas and halogen lamps, the most conventional room we’d seen that day. But Susie was an artist, and there were odd pictures on the walls— of cats bringing gifts, not of mice, but of swimming pools, espresso makers, burglar alarms, even a Barbie doll. They were very funny, and I was entranced.
    “Susie’s pussy period,” said Nick. “Last year she did dragons.”
    I must have looked puzzled.
    “Of course, they were all wearing darling designer outfits, fully accessorized.”
    I thought I could like Susie. A lot. She had blue eyes and a warm, round face. I wished that sometime, somehow, I could achieve the self-confidence to look the way she did, but it just isn’t in the genes. My mom has standing appointments with so many waxers, cutters, filers, and peelers I don’t know how she works in shopping for her state-of-the-art wardrobe. She despairs of her two politically correct daughters (not that she isn’t p.c. as well, just a very well-groomed feminist), but, still, I’d like to see the day I let my hair go gray.
    Susie turned to me. “We miss Jason so, so much— already. Did you know him well, my dear?”
    “I didn’t, really. Rob was his friend.”
    “Oh? Are you new at the Chronicle ?”
    It was the first time I’d been challenged. I took a deep breath— I wasn’t after anything I could use in court, but you never knew, and lying’s never a good idea. I said, “I have another interest in this, to tell you the truth. The police are investigating my law partner in connection with Jason’s death.” I liked Susie a lot, and Nick seemed like a fine man whom Rob knew— these people were known quantities, I told myself. And took a chance. “They found her name in Jason’s pocket, but she didn’t know him. Rob is a friend of hers, too, so one of the things we’re trying to find out is why it was there.”
    Nick, true to the professorial image, pulled a pipe from his pocket and began fiddling with it. “If she’s an attractive young woman, that could go a long way toward explaining it.”
    I said, “He seemed to like a lot of very different types of women.”
    “Oh?” said Nick. “They seemed all of a piece to me. Beautiful, intelligent, successful— thoroughly acceptable in every way.”
    “Acceptable seems a funny word to use. I mean, wouldn’t ‘desirable’ be more to the point?”
    Nick said to Rob: “Quick study, this lady.” Rob looked confused, and Nick turned back to me. “You got it, all right. He had women, but there was something passionless about it— like they were just so many appendages to his image.”
    “So you think he was an image-oriented man.”
    “Either that,” said Susie, “or he had something to hide— if only from himself.”
    “You thought he was gay?”
    “I’ve wondered. I can’t say I haven’t wondered. It’s funny— when he came to dinner here, he never brought anyone.”
    “Not even Adrienne?”
    “Adrienne? Who on earth is that?”
    Rob said, “His assistant. About twenty-two, looks like a punk rocker.”
    Nick exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke. “Come on! He wouldn’t be caught dead with someone like that.”
    “Well, she might have been the thing he had to hide. She was living with him, but she says they were just roomies. On the other hand, his friend Barry Dettman swears they were lovers.”
    “We never even heard of her!” Susie sounded put out.
    I said, “Jason was a man with secrets.”
    Nick took a few puffs. “When we first met he didn’t even want to say where he was from. Then later, I met his sister, who’d moved here from wherever it was— I’m still not sure— and found out coincidentally that that’s who she was. Jason had never even mentioned her.”
    “But here’s the question,” I said, “was he just a secretive kind of guy? Or did he really have something to